So here we are in the
furthest north-western outreaches of the
county, where the towns and villages look
towards Cambridge and Ely more than they
do to Ipswich or Bury. Mildenhall is
Suffolk's biggest parish, covering almost
2% of the entire county surface area. Not
a lot of people know that. It includes at
least five distinct settlements, the
largest of which is Mildenhall High Town.
Less than a third of the population of
the parish live in the town, so it is an
important reminder to family history
hunters in particular to remember the
difference between a parish and its main
town or village. Other settlements in the
parish include West Row, where the famous
Fen Tigers speedway stadium is, Beck Row,
Holywell Row and Kenny Hill. However,
Barton Mills, which forms a pleasant
southern suburb to the town, is actually
a separate parish. Housing estates sprawl
along the roads which encircle the air
base. The town centre itself is tiny, and
might once have been pretty.
Unfortunately, half a century of
occupation by the American Air Force have
overwhelmed the parish and rather worn
the town down, although there have been
great efforts in the last couple of years
to improve things, and the area around
the bus station bears testimony to this.

Perhaps
because of the rather low key nature of the town
centre, St Mary dominates its surrounding
settlement like no other church in Suffolk does.
You can't help but be struck by the sheer
immenseness of the building. It is the biggest
church in Suffolk, almost 60m long and 20m wide, with a
tower 40m high. Virtually all of it is original,
hardly anything of it is a Victorian extension.
It is a church of superlatives; the 14th century
west window is considered one of England's best,
the roof the finest in East Anglia. The church
contains Britain's biggest Royal Arms, and you
enter through one of the biggest church porches
in England - and you will be able to do this,
because the church is open all day, every day.

The fact that this
magnificent pile is in the middle of a fairly
scruffy little town only accentuates its glory.
But perhaps it is also that which makes it seem
curiously aloof. What you see is largely a
rebuild of the mid-15th century, in common with
the other great Suffolk churches. What makes
Mildenhall special is that the Decorated chancel survives from an earlier
building, its flowery east window a reminder of
how mystical we all were before the Black Death
turned us serious. However, it is deficient of
the chancel aisles you often find elsewhere in
churches of this size. The tower was completed in
the 1460s, apart from the stair turret which
rises above the battlements, an unfortunate
Victorian addition. If you look up at the tower
as darkness falls you will see that there is an
aircraft warning beacon up there, a necessary
feature on this, the only high building in the
parish.

Beside the south
side stands the medieval charnel house. This was
a necessary feature of any medieval town church
with a small graveyard; after thirty years or so,
corpses would be exhumed and placed in the
underground vault, to make room for more burials
in the churchyard. The charnel house had its own chantry priest, who said Masses for the
souls of the dead. Charnel houses, along chantry
priests, fell into disuse after the Reformation,
when there was no longer a theological imperative
for their use. In fact, the remains of this one
were 'gothicised' in the 19th century to make a
picturesque ruin. Another one survives in Bury St
Edmunds from the lost church of St Margaret.

The south porch is
pretty much Victorian, but in any case it is the
north porch which is outstanding. Many Suffolk
porches have an upper room, but none are as
commodious as this one. It formed a chapel to the
Blessed Virgin before the Reformation and was
later the town school. The vaulted ceiling of the
porchway is of a size and quality seen rarely
elsewhere in Suffolk. It is bigger than many
transepts. Indeed, I have been in smaller
churches than this porch. But the south porch
should not distract us from the fine west
doorway. You can't help thinking that it was
intended to be used as the main entrance. Once
you are inside, however, all thoughts of the
outside will driven from you by the sheer
vastness of the interior. It is tempting to turn
your attention immediately eastwards or upwards,
but if you turn west and go through the curtains
into the space beneath the gallery you will
discover a wonderful vaulted ceiling here as
well. The two lancet glasses here are probably
the best kept secret of the building. They are
beautiful, I think. In the gallery above hangs
what is claimed to be the largest Royal Arms in
England. It is certainly very big, and must have
created quite an impression when it was suspended
above the chancel arch.

You come to
Mildenhall to see the roofs. The most spectacular
is the nave roof, but the two aisles are even
more interesting and rewarding of time and
binoculars. Mildenhall's nave angels are
restored, although not as heavily as those at Woolpit. Somone was paid a
shilling a day to destroy them in the 1650s, but
they have suffered less from iconoclasm than from
18th century churchwardens firing into the air to
disperse jackdaws. They are not beautiful like
those at Blythburgh, but they are certainly
magnificent.

But the aisle roofs are the best in
England. The north aisle is the better of the
two.The massive hammerbeams are carved with the
most extraordinary figures, and you can't help
thinking that they don't need to be so big.
You're right - in fact, they don't need to be
there at all. Both aisle roofs are supported by
their own weight on the arcades, and all the
hammer beams are false. It did occur to me to
wonder for a moment if they had been made
originally for a quite different church, and used
here instead. Most of the hammer beams feature
prone figures with grotesque faces, all of them
rather startling. The beams may distract you from
the carvings on the spandrels, which are
exquisite. My favourites are the Annunciation,
the adoration of the shepherds, and St Michael
with his dragon.

All the
furnishings are modern, and were given by Munro Cautley in memory of his wife. He
designed them, and to be honest they aren't bad.
Like a lot of his work, they have a flavour of
1930s cinema architecture about them, despite
dating from the 1950s, but the carved figures on
the bench ends at the far west are super, with St
Etheldreda of Ely on one side, and the Blessed
Virgin on the other. The font isn't strikingly
beautiful, but it does include the arms of Sir
Henry Barton, Lord Mayor of London, whose tomb is
at the west end of the south aisle. Sam Mortlock thought he might have been
the major donor for the rebuilding of the church.
Incidentally, it is worth recording that Mr
Mortlock was a choirboy here in the 1930s, and
his enthusiasm for the building shines through.

There are a couple
of significant memorials, one of which is at the
eastern end of the south aisle. This is early
17th century, and commemorates Sir Henry North,
Lord of the Manor. I was disappointed to discover
from Mortlock that the weeping figures are 19th
century replacements. The Norths were still
around after the Commonwealth, and not in a
terribly good mood; Sarah North, wife of Henry
Jr, has a memorial beside the chancel arch on
which her husband records in Latin that he is Dead
while living, oh how hard; you are happy because
your life has ended, I am desolate because I
cannot die. He wrote the gloomy sequence Eroclea
or the Mayd of Honour, and then promptly
killed himself. Puts a bit of a downer on the
thing, don't you think?

The rood screen now is very
different from what must once have been
here. The fact that there are two upper
doorways to the original rood loft stairs
suggests that it must have been a massive
affair. The screen you see today is a
20th century replacement. Beside it is
the memorial to Cautley and his wife,
opposite the North memorials. The
Cautleys are also commemorated (and
buried) at Westerfield, across the
county.

It is easier to be grand in
Perpendicular than it is in Decorated.
Because of this, I think that the chancel
is really rather splendid, and often
overlooked except for the window.
Mortlock calls our attention to a
graveslab in Lombardic script in the
sanctuary. It remembers Ricardus de
Wichforde who made this new work.
He it is we have to thank for the
wonderful window tracery. To imagine it
with its original glass is to recall and
regret how much we have lost.